


The Future Is Now

by Puggy_Robin



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Character Death, Drowning, Immortality, Not as depressing as the tags make out, Self-Hatred, Self-Reflection, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24895192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puggy_Robin/pseuds/Puggy_Robin
Summary: Dallas returns to the city after years and years of running away from himself and his past.No more running. He's just a tired and sad old man on the inside.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The Future Is Now

**Author's Note:**

> Umm... it sounds a lot darker that it is, or it's a lot darker than a I meant it to be? I don't know.
> 
> There's drowning and blood and pain, both physically and mentally. And most likey self destructive behaviour.
> 
> Just a friendly warning.
> 
> It was supposed to turn into a Dallas and Luck, but it never quite got there. Although it may go there in the future, who knows? Depends on if I ever get my act together.

Dallas sat at the bar, amber whiskey in hand, contemplating his life so far as the chunk of ice rolled around in his glass.

The place had gotten older, the regulars had changed, it smelled more like piss than it smelled of old time hooch and cigars, but it still had the same feel.

The old speak easy was now a legal establishment, selling legal spirits and had a T.V showing a baseball game instead of flapper girls dancing for all they were worth.

So much had changed over the years, but you just couldn’t get rid of the feeling. Like this old dank bar used to be something special. Like this town used to be something special.

Like he used to be something. 

He wasn’t special, but he was something alright.

Way back when, he’d been a selfish son of a bitch, out to get his twisted kicks.

Yeah he’d admit it. He’d been a piece of shit back then and he’d deserved everything he got.

Tossed in the Hudson to drown for eternity.

After all the people he hurt, after all the people he killed as if it were nothing… yeah he got what was coming to him.

The Gandors had sent him to hell for his crimes.

Yeah, hell is exactly what it was, drowning over and over again for months.

And it had only been a few months, although it had felt like forever.

Dallas, with what little of his brain wasn’t focused on the filthy water inside and around him, wasn’t focused on the unnamed things crawling in and eating his fat bloated flesh, screamed for him to escape.

So escape was exactly what he did and to this day, it still haunted his dreams.

He was encased in concrete from his waist down and stuffed inside a steel drum. His hands and feet were bound underneath the cold grey cement. There was no way to escape unless you let go of your sanity and said fuck it.

With every bit a strength he’d possessed and desperate determination, he ripped his weakened flesh apart. His skin tearing piece by rotten piece. His bones snapping and shattering as he slowly and excruciatingly worked himself free from his watery grave.

To say it hurt was an understatement.

Eventually he tore himself free from the steel drum, making himself bleed and break over and over again until he floated to the surface and took his first choking breath of oxygen.

His throat and lungs burned, his constant gasping threatening to tear him apart from the inside.

He let himself drift for a while as his broken body healed itself, staring up at the pitch black sky as all the little bits of him, the bits you never really appreciated before, slither back to him. _Like toes. Have you ever just wiggled them for the fun of it?_

It was bitterly cold as he dragged himself out of the river, as naked as the day he was born, what was left of his clothes still stuck inside the barrel.

He sat on the river bank, cold, as he watched his skin heal, turning itself from a deathly pallor back to his natural tan. Watched horrified, as it expelled dirty water and pushed out living things that had taken up residence in his drifting corpse.

When he felt a tickling scratch at the back of his throat and regurgitated up more of the same, dark water and crawling things, into his own lap, he broke.

He screamed and screamed until his throat bled, until his body and mind were so exhausted he couldn’t stay conscious any longer.

When he woke, it was still dark and it was still freezing cold.

He needed clothes. 

So for the first time in his life, he mugged someone for a reason, and not just because he felt like it.

He took their clothes and what little money the poor bastard had, then fled towards the city.

With no clue as what to do or where to go, he wandered the city aimlessly, his feet leading the way, until he came across a burnt down building. It looked familiar and after a while he realised why.

He was back where it all began. Well, not where it actually began. He’d been a pathetic shit long before he’d hassled some old geezer for a box of hooch.

But that was the moment when things took a nose dive from bad, to so freaking bad.

Damn stuff wasn’t even alcohol, but some magical shit that let you live forever. He should have looked the other way, but his dumbass self never knew when to keep his nose out.

He hid out in the burnt building, taking shelter from the icy wind that cut into his tired bones.

He sat there in the remains for a while, planning his next move. If anyone found out he was hanging around, he’d find himself back at the bottom of the river, or worse. Who knew what the Gandors would do to him next.

He had to get out of town. Just disappear.

His eyes grew heavier the longer he sat there., the longer he planned his escape. Trouble was, he needed money. It was a cold hard fact that money took you places and if he wanted to get away… He’d need to find some and fast.

Maybe he could rob someone. Like that weirdo couple did to him a while ago. Just hit someone from behind and run as fast and as far as he could go. Maybe he’d get a train, they were pretty reliable, right?

His eye lids were falling, heavy as rocks, when something caught his eye. Gleaming at him from under the rubble. It was so far out of sight, he was surprised he even saw it.

He stared at it for a while until his curiosity got the better of him. He crawled closer, shuffling under the falling beams as he tried to reach it. 

Stretching as far as he could, his fingers finally wrapped around something. It was cold and smooth. Like glass. It was heavy and uneven, as if it was full of liquid.

He pulled it from its hiding place and shuffled back out into the open room. 

He stared at it, a sick shiver running down his spine. 

It was a glass bottle.

A bottle he new all to well.

His hands shook. Instinct told him to throw it against the wall. Get rid of it. It caused nothing but trouble. Yet, he couldn’t do it.

Putting it down, he went to see if there where anymore. He couldn’t just leave this stuff lying around, but all he found was broken glass and ash.

Sitting back down, he just stared at the bottle. What would he do with it? He could sell it? He bet he could get a lot of money for it. Enough to get out of the city and start new somewhere else.

No. Selling it didn’t sound like a good idea. It sounded like a lot of people dying and a hell of a lot more assholes who couldn’t be killed. 

Besides, word would get around and that would bring them all down on his head. He didn’t want that.

He should destroy it. That would be best. The easiest. Most rational. 

But Dallas had never been accused of being rational, even on a good day. So he stared and stared at it, the night passing slowly, his stomach eating away at itself, his bones brittle in the cold and he was so tired he could sleep for a year.

Something in his brain snapped then and he lunged for the bottle, opening it to take one hefty gulp. Then another and another, suddenly thirsty as hell. _I already can’t die. Might as well stay young forever too, ama right?_

He’d consumed half of it before he finally stopped, looking down at it in disgust. Like it had made him do it. And that was what made him mad. No one ever made him do anything. It was always him making stupid decisions. Everything up until now was all his fault and he hated himself for it. 

He threw the bottle and the rest of its contents against the wall.

Returning to his place on the dirty floor, he huffed to himself. He wouldn’t know if it had worked, until maybe ten or twenty years from now and he looked in a mirror to see the same face looking back.

After a while, he looked up at the sun filtering through the damaged ceiling and decided it was time to go.

If you’re going to disappear, it might as well be today.

  
Years past by, some in a flash, others at a crawl.

After all these years, Dallas had lived through a lot. Or more specifically… he’d survived a lot. 

The word “lived” implied he done more than crawl through war torn countries covered in his own piss and shit and other peoples blood, just so he could make it home again. 

It was a mistake to join the army, a mistake he’d made over and over gain.

First World War II , then Korea and Vietnam and then came Iraq and Afghanistan.

Every time he enlisted under a different name and got shipped somewhere new. He was a well travelled man, if you counted occupying war zones as tourism.

Each and every re-up was a new hell, even if you knew you couldn’t die. It was the guilt of being the only bastard to come back that got to him the most, but he kept going back. The army had given him plenty of stability over the years. 

Some place to be. Something to do. _Somebody_ to be. 

He hadn’t been Dallas Genoard for a very long time.

Everybody likes the story of the bad boy joining the army and a gentleman leaving it at the end. They forget to tell you that the gentleman is no longer whole. Whether its physically or mentally, there’s always something missing. 

Every few years or in-between tours, he’d come back to the city, check in on his sister, Eve. Watching her from a distance was the closest he got to being himself. Watching the only person he’d ever really cared about gave him peace, if only for a little while.

Every time he saw her she was a little older. It was upsetting, that he didn’t get to live that life by her side, but he was happy for her. She’d gotten married, had kids, she’d gotten on with her life. She lived in a bright and happy world and he would never ruin that by waltzing back in. 

He missed her more than anything. It hurt not to go to her, but he just couldn’t do it.

That was until, many years later, his baby sister, older now than he would ever be, got sick. 

Dementia. 

She’d been taken to a home. It was a nice one, but still a place full of unfamiliar people.

He decided it was safe to visit her there. No one knew who he was, not even Eve, and if she did remember him sometimes, its not like anyone would believe her. It was selfish on his part he knew. He was a coward and he wouldn’t argue the matter.

The guilt of leaving her there hurt more than any bullet.

He always visited her under the guise of a friends grandson, the nurses cooed at him for being such a lovely boy, oh if they only knew what he was, what he’d done, they’d run and they’d run fast.

She died a few years later and he wept for days. His sister was gone.

He stayed hidden at her funeral. Refused to check out the faces of those who attended, some now old and tired, others still forever young. He wanted to scream and shout and raise them all to the ground, but he couldn’t. He had no right.

He left the city again after that and didn’t return for a very long time.

Yet, he couldn’t stay away forever. This city was his home and it called to him. Always.

So here he sat, in some dive, with a whiskey in hand. Reflecting on how he got here.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. I really hope you enjoyed it. xxx


End file.
